The invention relates to receivers for use in receiving and communicating with security system alarm panels and in particular, to a procedural method and apparatus for providing a security receiver with additional information as part of the telephone communication with an alarm panel.
Security system alarm panels are very common and normally report by telephone to a central security station when an alarm condition or event has been detected or on a pre-arranged basis. The securing station typically receives telephone communications from alarm panels of different types and recently for cost efficiencies, there is a tendency for the central station to consolidate the receiving and processing function by combining several security stations. The reporting systems can be unrelated as well.
With this consolidation, the codes previously used to uniquely identify a particular alarm panel may no longer be unique to that particular alarm panel. The individual alarm panels could perhaps be reprogrammed with a unique number, however, this would be time consuming and expensive. Rather than attempting to change the host of existing alarm panels such that each is uniquely identified, steps have been taken to have the central station uniquely identify the alarm panels by using additional information provided by the telephone company with each telephone signal.
Caller I.D. information (preferrably the originating telephone number) is provided by the telephone provider. The various telephone companies offer caller I.D. as an upgrade to the basic telephone service, however, in some cases, this information is blocked as requesting by the calling party. Therefore, caller I.D. information is not always available and therefore, using this additional information as part of the unique identification of an alarm panel is not always practical. The dialed telephone number is within the control of the security station, in that it can have a number of direct indial (DID) numbers, and these numbers can be assigned to alarm panels of distinct groups. In this way, each alarm panel within a group is uniquely identified by its original address.
The dialed number ((DN) and the telephone number of the calling alarm panel are useful to the universal receiver as outlined in our earlier application. The combined information (DN, Caller I.D. telephone number) can be inserted in the telephone signal like caller I.D., preferrably between the first and second rings of a plain old telephone signal (POTS) and processed by a universal receiver. It has been found that this combined information is not a common request of telephone companies and therefore, this information is not available from telephone companies in a cost effective manner. Caller I.D. information alone, is not as effective as it is not always provided. As can be appreciated, there are a host of alarm panels in existence which communicate with central stations and those central stations have universal receivers which are capable of answering alarm panels of different protocols. The present invention provides a cost effective device and method for providing the information to a universal receiver of a security station.
The present invention is directed to a method of providing a security station receiver with caller I.D. and dialed number information as part of an ordinary telephone signal. The method comprises using an enhanced bulk delivery telephone service to receive telephone signals from a host of alarm panels in the bulk signal, using a channel bank receiver to process the bulk signal and convert the bulk signal into a series of ordinary telephone signals with dialed number and caller I.D. information included in the signal.
According to an aspect of the invention the dialed number and the caller I.D. information is provided between the first and second ring of the signal.
According to a further aspect of the invention, the ISDN signal is provided to the channel bank receiver on one channel and the receiver distributes the signal with the appropriate information to one of a series of channels with the receiver adding the caller I.D. and dialed number information in the signal between the first and second rings.
The invention is also directed to a channel bank receiver in combination with a security station receiver. The channel bank receiver includes an input channel for receiving an ISDN signal or other enhanced bulk delivery signal from a telephone system. This signal is divided by the receiver using a series of channels where each channel is provided with the dialed number and the caller identification information, and inserts this information like caller I.D. preferrably between a generated first ring and a generated second ring with the channel then receiving the analogue signal of the calling party. This produces an ordinary signal output on any of the channels which can be picked up by the security station receiver. The telephone signal has the dialed number and the caller identification information provided in the signal between the first and second ring. This is similar to caller I.D. information that can be provided by a telephone company in a conventional signal. In contrast, the desired information is provided between the first and second ring after the information has been selected from the information provided in the bulk signal for each telephone signal.
According to yet a further aspect of the invention, the security station receiver uses the caller I.D. and the dialed number information in combination with the address provided by the alarm panel to uniquely identify the alarm panel.
According to yet a further aspect of the invention, the receiver compares the caller I.D. information to determine whether the calling party continues to subscribe to the reporting service and effectively, disconnects or alternately processes the call if service has been discontinued.
According to yet a further aspect of the invention, the universal receiver compares the provided caller I.D. information with a reference data base of caller I.D. information and modifies the signal processing if the caller I.D. information has changed. This can be used to identify problems such as non-reported changes of location.